Well today is December 29th, so as promised to my zero followers, here is my first official post:

I will first say that I'm more of a numbers guy than a writer, so bare with me while I get my writing legs stable beneath me.

In my first post, I am going to explain why I decided to start a blog and what I hope to divulge in this space over the days, months (and years??) to come.  Here goes...

About a week and a half ago, I was watching a segment on 60 minutes about "superior autobiographical memory" (60 Minutes Video Clip) and it dawned on me that while I think of myself as an above-average "memorizer" in the school testing sense, I rarely think much about my own past.  What was I doing in 2006?  What did I care about in 2004? What did I accomplish in 2001?  I can't read about this stuff in a book or watch a documentary.  I have to dig up old pictures and rack my brain (if I knew how, I'd add a side bar column of everything I can think of from those years), and that's not even trying to recollect the 18 years of life before the turn of the century!

That segment of 60 Minutes inspired me.  Maybe I don't have a natural talent for remembering whether October 1, 1998 was a Tuesday or a Thursday, or what I had for breakfast, lunch and dinner that day, but if I start writing about my thoughts and experiences in a blog or journal, not only will I be ingraining my thoughts and actions in my brain by writing about them, but also, I'll be documenting it on the Internet.

(Interesting side note: Turns out you could theoretically memorize a perpetual calendar "system" described in this article and use that "system" to figure out historical days of the week (Perpetual Calendar Explanation).  I'm not saying these 60 Minutes people are frauds, I'm just saying that this system and some practice could have you spewing off "June 3, 1984 was a Sunday, yeah, definitely a Sunday")

Another reason to start this blog is that 2011 is going to be a "game changer" year for the direction of my career path.  I applied early decision to business school this past fall and have already been accepted.  My current employer is still in the dark, but my mind is already racing with ideas and excitement about what the future holds.  I have a stable job in a growing department of a large, successful company.  I have a CFA designation, the result of 3 years of pain-staking self-study.  But I am looking for something more fulfilling.  Something I can really be passionate about.  When I was in high school, I started an ice cream truck business with my dad and grew the business into a 5-truck fleet.  It was exciting to create and run a business.  It was rewarding to create a strategy and then see the results of its implementation.  I'm not hoping to go back into ice cream, but I am hoping to get back into my entrepreneur's boots -- to get that excited feeling back.  That is the reason I am going to business school, to take a step back from my current track and move forward in a different direction.  One aimed towards launching a new, more complex business.  So, yes, I'm 29 years old and preparing to launch.

While business school doesn't start for another 8+ months, I fully intend to make the most of my time until then. My goal is to launch a start up business out of school and I know that school will provide immense resources to achieve this goal.  But I also know that I'm going to be incredibly busy once school starts.  To wait until August to begin pursuit of this goal would be a tremendous waste of time to explore ideas and gain experiences that could turn out to be crucial to my end goal.  In this blog, I will layout and explore my thoughts and ideas as I prepare myself over this period.

(290 days until I turn 30)

Test Post

29launch is a blog I will be keeping as I progress towards the launch of a startup company by 2013.

This is a test post.

Official posts will begin on Dec 29, 2010
(290 days before my 30th birthday).